Rants and Raves on Espresso

I have a lot of respect for Nick Cho, owner of Washington D.C.’s murky coffee. He’s established a place that pulls some of the best espresso shots on the East Coast. He’s arguably the primary brainchild behind the Portafilter.net podcasts. And he’s also known for his quality coffee industry “altruism”: supporting aspiring baristas and café owners who want to commit their livelihoods towards making some of the best espresso on the planet.

However, Nick Cho’s reputation will unfortunately always be marred by his association with one of the most arrogant and proposterous claims ever made in America’s modern day quality espresso business. It’s the notion that quality coffee is in its Third Wave, a.k.a. the “Third Wave of Coffee”.

This is particularly unfortunate because the idea isn’t even Mr. Cho’s to begin with. As even he once pointed out, the blame lies squarely with Trish Skeie — who otherwise is one of quality coffee’s luminaries, given her role behind the Sebastopol, CA roastery, Taylor Maid Farms. (She is now Director of Coffee for Seattle’s highly respected Zoka Coffee.) In my mailbox today, I found this month’s Barista Magazine, which features an article by Trish Skeie under the self-serving title, “Third Wave In Its Third Year.”

“Hey, baby, what’s your Wave?”

To boil this whole pompous wave theory down, a few years ago Ms. Skeie postulated that coffee consumption and preparation was progressing through three distinct transformations.

The First Wave is consumption — marked by America’s early preoccupation with poor quality coffee, often instant or freeze dried, that was more a caffeine and heat delivery mechanism than anything with an enjoyable flavor. The Second Wave is about enjoyment and defining specialty coffee — characterized by the selection of arabica beans over robusta, Colombian coffee’s Juan Valdez marketing campaign, and the proliferation of espresso and Starbucks.

So where are we now? Supposedly, this Third Wave is all about letting the coffee speak for itself — or enjoying coffee for coffee’s sake. Confused yet? You should be, because here are the problems with this logic and how people in the industry are misusing and abusing it…

The whole Third Wave concept has since been bandied about in the specialty coffee industry as a sort of pompus and self-congratulatory marketing hype about their products and services — a self-appointed seal of approval. Yet this wave theory doesn’t describe the coffee or even how it is prepared. In actuality, it most accurately describes the coffee consumer. It has little, if anything, to do with the actual businesses that are now proudly tattooing Third Wave across their chests.

And here’s another problem with all those who like to think of themselves as Third Wave: the wave theory concept essentially presumes that quality espresso simply did not exist on this planet until three years ago (e.g.: Trish Skeie’s recent Barista Magazine article). In the world of quality coffee, this is akin to saying that Christopher Columbus “discovered” America — while ignoring the brain anyeurism that must have lead to our overlooking the Lucayans who had lived in the Bahamas for centuries prior.

The facts are that great espresso has existed long before naked portafilters, single-origin bean roasts, and other gimmickry that some might associate with the Third Wave. In Italy, for example, the four Ms — miscela, macchina, macinatura, and mano (or the beans/blend, the machine, the grind, and the “hand”) — have been widely recognized as the fundamental keys to great espresso for generations. Even to this day.

Even here in our backyard, businesses such as Mr. Espresso have been promoting the highest quality standards in beans, roasts, equipment, and barista training for multiple generations — i.e., since the likes of some of these self-proclaimed third wavers were still in Pampers. Quality espresso is not the sudden confluence of modern scientific discovery and magic. It’s been around for decades, and its supposed “secrets” have largely remained unchanged throughout.

Unfortunately, since people like Ms. Skeie had their first “real” espresso in recent years, many will keep on presuming it’s their own discovery and that they are at the vanguard of something new. But when we talk about any Third Wave, what constitutes quality coffee hasn’t really changed. What has changed is the education and sophistication of the American coffee consumer palate. It’s just a lot more convenient for some businesses to take credit for what rightfully belongs to their customers.

Comic relief: Paulie Walnuts and Big Pussy of TV’s The Sopranos ponder the Third Wave
UPDATE:
Added an embedded video, since YouTube didn’t really exist when we first wrote this.

22 Responses to “Third Wave Coffee, or First Wave Pompousness?”

The “third-wave” concept may yet be a little half-baked, but I suspect you’re trolling if you’d say there isn’t at least _something_ new happening under this umbrella.

A radical de-commodification of coffee is first and foremost the goal of this loose “movement”. Understanding coffee as a plant, understanding coffee from the perspective of growers, expressing unique characteristics of single estate coffees in the cup, building an educated consumer base… all of this contributing to an ecosystem that will lift dedicated small coffee farmers out of a quagmire that regards their crop as one global undifferentiated commodity.

Mere “specialty” coffee isn’t going to fix what is wrong with the global coffee market. Certification-based marketing doesn’t solve the problem (and shifts more burden onto producers while further obscuring the complex realities from consumers). Third-wave-ish notions of seed-to-cup or grower-to-consumer transparency have the potential to establish deeper and more lasting benefits to producers and open up the floodgates on the largely untapped potential of culinary appreciation of great coffees.

Its very easy to be cynical and view all of this hype as so much window dressing designed to yank the chains of wannabe snobs and slow-foods bandwagon hoppers, but those of us who have had the rare luxury of cupping many of the worlds best coffees in the last few years from the hands of some of the most skilled roasters have tasted a glimpse of something compelling and transcendent.

I see a lot of partially articulated “third wave” ideas getting glued onto every indie s-bux clone that learned to pour some latte art. There is an enthusiasm that is contagious about these new trends that people want to latch onto, not necessarily participating in the dialog or cognizant of how much hard work is left to be done. The nebulous nature of the undertaking, the potential pitfalls of easy compromises, the near-instantaneous dilution of the conceptual language, and the justifiable cynicism toward all things retail will make these changes a long hard slog.

We owe a lot to Italian espresso (a brewing methodology and roasting arts originally concocted to deal with having limited access to the higher grade green coffees). But obscuring farms and countries of origin behind fancy brand names, making false claims of shelf stability, and retaining as trade secrets the knowledge and artistry of improving cup quality are ideas (regardless of merit) whose time has passed. If this third-wave business means anything, it is probably close to an insurgent open-sourcing of an industry grown too complacent at home, fighting for innovations that might bootstrap the bean to the next level. And much like the open source movement in IT, the signal to noise ratio will probably remain heavy on the noise, even as the resulting sea change transforms and obliterates old models of doing business.

I don’t think its fair to say that Nick or Trish or anyone of us in the third wave echo chamber is taking credit for creating this swell. At best, we’re all waxing our surfboards and praying this wave will be big enough to wash away a lot of the cruft and hucksterism of the global coffee machine, contributing where we can, running our mouths, drawing lines in the shifting sand, and enjoying better coffee.

[…] I follow a tremendous number of coffee blogs with my trusty RSS reader. There are more and more of them popping up all the time. Some are good, many are just junk blogs writing about coffee as a means of generating google ad revenue. One blog I’ve enjoyed is the far-ranging coffee blog of Bay Area coffee enthusiast Greg Sherwin. From detailed friendly reviews of small cafes to breaking coffee news from Nestle or McDonalds, Sherwin’s coffee interests are broad. Yesterday he dropped a post thumbing his nose at some of my brothers/sisters-in-arms and our pet conceits about coffee quality and hooked me into penning an overblown response, which I include below. [My non coffee-nerd readers should feel free to skip all this and instead follow this link to Nancy Reagan’s awe inspiring anti-drug music video.] […]

Not to take anything away from your true achievements, Nick, but there’s nothing magical or unique about this “Third Wave” label. You’re in good company. I see it as basic human nature to feel a need to define what one might see as progress and achievement surrounding them… even to the extent that it might create something of a center-of-the-universe phenomenon. Stories and even mythologies originated from this mindset. To the 19th century Americans, it was belief in manifest destiny; to the Hun people of China, it was the Middle Kingdom; to the Jews, it was the Chosen People. But for anyone outside those circles, the perception can be very different.

I encourage you to step outside of the laboratory for a moment and take a closer look at that strawman. He’s sprouted neck bolts and is shaking down the local townspeople, saying, “Friend!” You may be wearing the white lab coat, but that doesn’t mean he’s doing your bidding.

well…this whole internet thing is a touch new to me, but, oddly enough, i find myself with a spare moment or two, and a simillar dislike of the term “third wave.” yes, i am an old fart. but it seems to me that the term is often used by kids infused with the spirt of radical empiricism (to borrow adam gopnik’s phrase) who think they invented coffee. sure, accurate measurement, and control over variables have enabled some shops (mine included) to elevate the standard and repeatability of the drinks they serve. but guys (and women) like us have been engaged in the process of trying to make good coffee for literally hundreds of years, and i think we owe a debt of gratitude to those whose shoulders we’re standing on rather than assuming that anyone who doesn’t know what “pid” is an acronym for is a hack engaged in the destruction of the earth. yes, some bad coffee comes in cans. some people are out for a buck. some coffee isn’t served fresh or made well. oh the horror! there are hacks and short-cutters everywhere. in every field. this is not news, in my opinion. but good espresso didn’t begin with 203.5 degrees, and good coffee didn’t start with alfred peet, or george howell. we are – like it or not – a trend. god knows what the next trend will be, but there will be one, and i hope whoever makes us look old-fashioned will be less smirky and disrespectful than we are. i also hope they don’t call themselves “fourth wave.”

Mahler didn’t invent the symphony and all this talk of “third wave” reminds me of boy trombonists of a certain age who didn’t even realize Haydn existed let alone had an inescapable influence on all who came after.

here’s the thing, as i see it: there have been modest and talented people working quietly and capably for generations making really good coffee in some context or another , many of them without blogs or even internet connections…using the term “third wave” minimizes their contributions to our sucess. i would love to read more about our ancestors, and how interesting their coffee traditions and contexts were, as well as what we can learn from them still.

Having just written an article called “Coffee’s Third Wave” for a new magazine called Imbibe (the magazine is about wine, spirits, tea, coffee, etc; there is a web site, but my article isn’t available there) I guess I have to jump in here, especially because I quote Nick, Trish, Tony, James, and lots of other people therein.

As I see it, the term third wave is a generalization, a construct, a way of trying to describe a new energy that has infected the coffee scene of late. Of course people produced good coffee before the so-called third wave came along, and of course there are people who take the whole third wave idea way too far.

But as somebody who’s been obsessing over espresso in the Bay Area for the past 25 years, I’ve got to say that–with a few exceptions, which I’ll get to–until James opened Blue Bottle there was not a single venue in the immediate Bay Area that I felt comfortable recommending to friends who asked me where they could get a real espresso. Ritual, which I feature in the article, was another milestone–a full-service cafe serving up espresso drinks made to the standards that have been set in the Pacific Northwest over the past ten or fifteen years, a place where the baristas take obsessive care with every shot. And, of course, there’s Andrew Barnett up in Santa Rosa, who also deserves mention for the fine coffees he roasts.

The Bay Area may have been first, but IMHO the Bay Area institutions got lazy and sloppy, and didn’t pay any attention to what was happening to the north. Fifteen or 20 years ago, Mr. Espresso was roasting some dynamite espresso, but I haven’t been able to drink it for years. When Iolanda was still at the Trieste in the seventies and eighties, she knew how to pull a shot. Ever since then the Trieste’s baristas have been clueless. There and at the Berkeley branch, just up the street from my house, order a cappuccino and the baristas keep the pump going until there are 4 or 5 ounces of hideously overextrated coffee in the cup with sickening white patches on top. And don’t get me started on Chris Cara, who keeps getting quoted as a Bay Area espresso expert.

Call it what you will, there’s a new energy in the coffee world, and it’s spreading around the country. Maybe, just maybe, in about twenty years coffee will be treated with the respect it deserves. And if that happens it will be the result of the passion and caring of a lot of people, including those who have embraced the term third wave.

Maybe you’ve had it lucky and you don’t need a label. Rejoice in knowing you have been a part of the culture for this time. Why do people fret when labels appear? It’s not like they stay, the continue to evolve. These motions are temporary ways of grappling with concepts that are a moment in time percieved by an audience. Hell, with the current generation of web applications and design the label Web2.0, NextWeb, all come in to being and then find scorn once adoption begins. “But the web is no different then …”

Coming from the SouthEast perspective we have only the very very tip of the iceburg being shown when it comes to Specialty Coffee. Before a few years ago Specialty would have been the red label, J&R special, ooh dunken donuts has a blend?!?! heheh. Now Counter Culture has radical transparency, we’re all learning about this amazing chain from seed to cup and I want to be a part of this. I don’t want to own a McCafe, I want to own a business that works on educating my locals about something they’ve taken for granted and quite frankley been served crap for years. To tell everyone that there is something organic afoot, a limited love, seasonal, enjoy for it will be different soon! Love that labors of love have been put forth every step of the way and respect that more for the experience you’ve been given.

A label like the third wave doesn’t have to be taken as seriously or as weighted as you have it. It’s groupthink combined with resonate passions of the past grabbing a voice in the moment. Those who broadcast it though help those in lesser informed areas to grab on to something that isn’t readily available and allows us to “cross the chasm” persay easier. It’s not going to kill, or ruin, or make the industry any worse than the majority of the industry is already. I’ll keep my thoughts behind positive movements will have positive results, and I think this is a positive thing.

“Third Wave” does no more disrespect to previous paradigms of coffee than Classical music does to Baroque. If there’s disrespect apparent out there, it’s from the individual… not tied to the concept of third wave.

Whatever. This semantics b.s. is tiresome. If you don’t get it, you don’t get it.

‘Kay, the term ‘Third Wave’ refers primarily to this country, although there are parts of Europe that are experiencing a similar growth in coffee interest, and it refers to the awakening of enthusiasts int he area of coffee. It is vague, and a generalization, but it refers to people that actually care what is in the cup, to a degree that caring results in a far superior product. It refers to those that would like to get a cup that tastes like fresh ground coffee smells. Twenty years ago, if you had an espresso machine in your home, you were a bit of an odd duck. The Krups 934 was a hunnert bucks, and Mr.Coffee and Delonghi and KitchenAid didn’t all have mokapots for sale. There was no Alt.coffee, nor was there Coffeegeek, and the term home barista had yet to be coined. This was the tip of the iceberg, and this ‘Third Wave’ is the result of that iceberg. Every third person in this country knows what a cappucino is. That is also new, and a result of the ‘Third Wave’. As is the fair trade, organic, flavored and specialty lables on coffee in the grocery store, not to mention the bulk availability and the grinder.
Anyone who has noticed this shift in the consumer attitude towards coffee in the last two decades has witnessed the ‘Third Wave’. As to whether you care for teh moniker or not is immaterial. It is the term that, for better or worse, is used to describe these changes, and if I can tell whether the baristi in a place are going to; bother to wipe down the steam wand; are ‘allowed’ to adjust the grinder; and know how to pull all the magic out of a shot or push it down the drain by lableing the shop a ‘Third Wave’ participant in the window, I’m all for it!
What did you want to call it?

Oh, those changes are all around us, alright. No question — and all for the better! But a term like ‘Third Wave’ conveys the mentality of a quantum leap that’s dissociated with the past, or at least “previous waves”. It speaks to revolution rather than evolution. The best espresso of today and the mass enjoyment of it, for example, didn’t just magically appear as if some alien life form from outer space; it’s a result that’s built upon a continuum of experience, learning, consumer sophistication, and industry mastery that has accumulated over many decades.

There’s also an inherent egocentric error to the mentality that generates a notion such as a ‘Third Wave’. It’s driven primarily by internal, subjective experiences that are somewhat detatched — and decidedly so — from external reality.

For example, I’ve been reading the latest edition of Espresso Italiano Tasting as published by the Istituto Internazionale Assaggiatori Caffè. Here the science of espresso, from bean to cup, and the science of tasting it has evolved enough to form the nth edition of this guide in 2001. (The best I can compare it to anything here is to Ted Lingle’s Basics of Cupping Coffee, and even that is a weak comparison. He’s even regarded as a Second Waver for that matter.) The IIAC is also on its second generation (or should I say ‘Wave’?) of formal espresso tasting trialcards. Reading through it, I’m not so much impressed with the guide as I am at seeing the thought, experience, and standards that are behind it. Reading it, I can’t help but get the sensation that this ‘Third Wave’ in the U.S. is myopic and a bit unknowingly primitive in a number of areas. It’s as if we’re excited at the discovery of white zinfandel because we’ve previously been so accustomed to drinking generic ‘white’ wine out of a box, and meanwhile other circles that we selectively ignore are doing vertical tastings of single vineyard Montrachet.

But I am not at all surprised that this line of thinking arose, and I’m not at all surprised at who is primarily blowing its trumpet. You take young people who have been slaving away at their own professional obsessions, and suddenly they find themselves at the center of attention in media and in worldwide networks of people where they never prior had a podium … or even imagined access. I know, because I experienced this first hand years ago after working on the first Web site in the U.S. back in 1991 — when it was years before most people ever heard of the Web (it’s still the foundation for my “day job” to this day). And I can completely identify with how someone like Trish Skeie can draw parallels to what she’s experiencing and the sensation of riding a big wave on a surfboard. But I also witnessed a lot of carnage from the rightful dot-com fallout of 2000 because of a lot of hubris and insulated thinking that the old rules of business no longer applied, that all brick and mortars were dinosaurs ready for extinction, print is dead, etc. Now I’m not suggesting there’s going to be a coffee ‘crash’. But I will say that I’ve learned a lot about how revolutionary thinking can be a gross, highly subjective error when the truth really lies in evolutionary thinking.

I don’t believe in waves. It’s elitist. And isn’t it a coincidence that the suggestion of a strata to anything is usually the fabrication of an individual or group who self-selects themselves at the most evolved end? So no waves in my coffee, thanks. In my book, we’re just at a point in time along the continued pursuit of better coffee.

Now why people like Trish and Nick Cho speak of ‘Third Wave’ not as if it’s just an idea but a present and unquestionable reality is another subject entirely. But to any coming-of-age teenager who feels as if they’re the first to discover adolescence, even if adolescence has evolved over generations, it’s hard to fathom the possibility of other realities.

[…] This book is not definitive nor complete by any means. However, I could not help get the impression of how much the specialty coffee industry in America (or dare I suggest the Third Wave?; this coming from a self-described No Waver) has only scratched the surface in some areas — especially when compared to the layered, rich, and multi-generational history in pursuit of excellent espresso (or coffee) that comes out in a book like this. Surprisingly, the book still leaves a lot open to subjectivity — despite the structure it provides in juding criteria. For example, the trialcards allow tasters to introduce “write-in” candidates for qualitative characteristics that they can then quantitatively score. […]

[…] The article is actually a nice briefing on the past ten hopeful years of a better and more sustainable coffee industry — covering globalization, organics, Fair Trade, social and economic issues, and other sustainable practices. Sure, there’s a bit of that regrettable “Third Wave” hocus pocus in there, but it comes off pretty positive for the future of a once highly endangered crop and industry. […]

[…] A little background for the uninitiated. A couple months ago, I posted a rather dismissive article on the contept of third wave coffee that resulted in a bit of discussion among coffee aficionados and, in particular, advocates of the term. Also in particular, Nick Cho and I exchanged a few e-mails in debate over what “third wave” means … and I noted how it is being cited and misused in ways never intended by those who were among the original proponents of the concept. […]

[…] This week’s The Brooklyn Paper published an article on espresso quality standards and their general absence in the fine borough, interviewing noneother than Third Wave pulpit banger, Nick Cho: The Brooklyn Paper: Coffee guru espresses his disgust. […]

As the article pointed out, the Third Wave did not event espresso shots. I would add that it did not event place emphasis on the nuanced flavor of the bean, as many had done this before with brewed coffee.

Maybe the Third Wave can be credited for placing emphasis on the nuanced flavor bean in the straight espresso shot.

Wow, how refreshing it is to see some content online that dismisses this “third wave talk” as marketing hype and ego-centric propaganda.

Look, I do think there is some validity in the notion that America is waking up to new ways of looking at coffee and the origin and flavour nuances of the beans.

But I also agree completely with this post that espresso has been done very well by the Italians for decades. And that all this talk of a third wave does imply some sort of revolution rather than the slight evolution that it really is.

I might also add that the current specialty coffee culture or counter-culture does come off as very elitist, arrogant, and even somewhat ignorant to me. You’ve got people who have only been drinking espresso for a few years, and have probably never had a ristretto pulled in a tiny local bar in an italian town that tops anything we have in North America. And these people claim to be experts and impose rules on others when they don’t know what a proper espresso should taste like, and it’s such a subjective thing anyway that it should never be as strictly defined as some make it. Don’t even get me started on the whole Robusta thing, as I can tell you that some of the absolute best espressos I have ever had in my life contained some percentage of Robusta (sometimes more than you’d think). I agree there is no place for Robusta in drip, but espresso is an entirely different beast. Anyway, I digress…

Good job in sticking up to the snobbishness that is pervading this industry.

It’s bad enough that the term “third wave” is being used as some bogus, self-awarded form of vendor certification. What makes it worse that the people who originated the term created it to mean something very different. They created it to define how society approaches their appreciation of coffee — not to describe nor qualify the people who make it and sell it. The term’s originators even disavow any association with its current misuse in today’s commercial coffee vernacular.

As for the elitism and arrogance, that probably can’t be avoided. It’s true that older, established veterans of any given industry lack the new idea potential of its more novice, younger “apprentices”. But as happens in many industries, coffee has its Young Turks who wish to dismiss their lack of experience by claiming the past is irrelevant to modernity — granting them an instant, convenient, and unencumbered path towards claiming “expert” status without putting in the years to achieve it.